Epic Off Topic Banter

[bingster088]

Does nobody care about the NHL playoffs?

I do! Chicago all the way.

[MeAgain]

Sorry. Australia is not a very ice-friendly continent.

[Nikolos]

Is Australia considered a continent? NZ is very icy right now. Had to scrape it off my windshield before driving to work today

[The Spaniard]

I wish we had weather that actually made it feel like winter when it is winter.

[Nikolos]

Where are you Spaniard? Spain?

[MeAgain]

Is Australia considered a continent? NZ is very icy right now. Had to scrape it off my windshield before driving to work today

Of course it is. What kind of neighbour are you, anyway?

No ice here and it only snows rarely, sometimes after decades, and only in one or two small and remote places on the whole continent. There has been plenty of rain recently, which is a good thing because we need it.

[Zenith Darksea]

No no, Australia is a country. Australasia, or Oceania as it is now called, is the name of the continent.

[The Spaniard]

Where are you Spaniard? Spain?

No I'm American, southern California more specifically. The weather here, while in the 70s most of the time gets kind of boring. One doesn't associate winter with spring like weather.

[Zhuge_Liang]

No I'm American, southern California more specifically. The weather here, while in the 70s most of the time gets kind of boring. One doesn't associate winter with spring like weather.

This is what the seasons are like where I live:-

Winter:-

October, November, December, January, February, March, 1/2 of April

Spring:-

1/2 of April, May

Summer:-

June

Winter 2:-

July, August

Autumn:-

September


So I'd happily trade seasons. We tend to get about 1-2 weeks of heat in may or june and that's usually it.

[The Spaniard]

The thing is that I've never really experience real winter weather, we hardly ever get snow here, and never where I live. I would have to go quite a distance north just to find some. Usually I've never traveled during the winter so I've just missed out.

[Zhuge_Liang]

I tend to travel the two weeks there is a heat wave at home, which is quite annoying

[ROFL Copter]

It's the American Canadian National Hockey League. Not surprisingly, it's a thing that Americans would care about (and Canadians too, I think), but to be honest the rest of the world doesn't really have much of an emotional investment in it.

Most Americans dont care at all. Its Canadian all the way.
Here the seasons go:

1. Winter/Snow/Under -20 At Least - November, December, January, February, March, April, 1/2 May

2. Spring - 1/2 May, June

3. Summer/Too hot - July, August

4. Autumn, Cold - September, October

[Morrowind3]

I was just surfing YouTube and look what I found:

Wow, Those animations are better then in my game.

Maybe disable arcade style battles? (idk what that actually does, lol)

[MeAgain]

No no, Australia is a country. Australasia, or Oceania as it is now called, is the name of the continent.

One of us is wrong and I believe it's you.

Check this out:
"Often referred to as the forgotten continent, Australia is the fourth continent. Incorrectly referred to as an island for significant periods of history, Australia is undoubtedly a climate. That being said, it is the smallest in landmass with just more than 4,000,000 square miles, but has a healthy population of over 20 million people."(That's 21 million now; still rather small)

If you don't believe that, look it up yourself.
If it is being reffered to as Oceania or Australasia (the continent) then it hasn't caught up here. I was always taught Australia is the continent and this general region (with various islands and whatnot) is called Australasia or Oceania. It's a bit odd to use an existing continent's name in the naming (or renaming) of this one (Australasia).

And the weather on the "fourth continent" (where I live anyway; South-East Coast):

1. Winter/No Snow but lots of rain (usually)/Under +10 C (but not by much)at night to around +15 C (warmest point during the day) - (sometimes late May) June, July, August (not always)

2. Spring/Around +25 C - (September usually already feels like spring) October, November

3. Summer/way too hot(depends, but usually 30s to mid 40s C) - December, January, February (sometimes early March too)
4. Autumn/Not that Cold, usually between just under +15 and +20-25 C - April, May

Yep, very cold...ice-hockey everyday.

[Zhuge_Liang]

One of us is wrong and I believe it's you.

Check this out:
"Often referred to as the forgotten continent, Australia is the fourth continent. Incorrectly referred to as an island for significant periods of history, Australia is undoubtedly a climate. That being said, it is the smallest in landmass with just more than 4,000,000 square miles, but has a healthy population of over 20 million people."(That's 21 million now; still rather small)

If you don't believe that, look it up yourself.
If it is being reffered to as Oceania or Australasia (the continent) then it hasn't caught up here. I was always taught Australia is the continent and this general region (with various islands and whatnot) is called Australasia or Oceania. It's a bit odd to use an existing continent's name in the naming (or renaming) of this one (Australasia).

And the weather on the "fourth continent" (where I live anyway; South-East Coast):

1. Winter/No Snow but lots of rain (usually)/Under +10 C (but not by much)at night to around +15 C (warmest point during the day) - (sometimes late May) June, July, August (not always)

2. Spring/Around +25 C - (September usually already feels like spring) October, November

3. Summer/way too hot(depends, but usually 30s to mid 40s C) - December, January, February (sometimes early March too)
4. Autumn/Not that Cold, usually between just under +15 and +20-25 C - April, May

Yep, very cold...ice-hockey everyday.

If asked in a quiz there are 7 continents, Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, South America, Oceania and Antarctica.

I have visited 6 of them, maybe when I'm rich I can go to Antarctica on one of those cruises.

The name of the Oceania continent differs depending on which country you are in. Some call it Australasia, others call it Oceania and in some places they just call it Australia. The last method seems a bit daft to me considering australia is a country within the continent, and if you name a continent which includes many other countries such as new Zealand, Papua new Guinea and a bunch of pacific islands it can be very misleading. But then people can be very casual about such things. I had a teacher who continuously refereed to 'africa' as a country including it in a list with the likes of germany,china, usa etc, which was quite annoying considering africa consists of around 60 countries. Peoples ignorance can be cringe worthy.

At least since the world cup is in south africa (a country) people may become aware of these things

[MeAgain]

Well, to be honest I had no idea that this continent was called anything else but Australia. Certainly, here it's just called Australia, country and continent.

I wouldn't call it daft. If you think about it there are islands around South America which are considered part of that continent, the same goes with Europe (Britain, for one), same with Asia and the rest of them.
Personally, I think it's more daft to call it Oceania or especially Australasia because ther are some Asian (continent) countries that fall under that general region (I think, but am not completely sure). Australia is the largest mass of land (isn't that what continents are?), therefore it's the centre to which all these little islands such as Fiji, New Zealand (bigger ones), Tonga, Kangaroo Island and so on belong to. Oceania is not a single mass of land but a region to which Australia belongs.

At least since the world cup is in south africa (a country) people may become aware of these things

I don't think they will last long enough for people to become aware.

[Zhuge_Liang]

It just seems misleading to me because no other continent is named after a constituent country, and it is bound to lead to confusion. It would be equally misleading to call asia china, or europe france. I personally prefer the name oceania because it suggests lots of ocean and island states, which is exactly what there is, in fact Oceania is the only continent to consist solely of islands. In any event all three names Oceania, Australasia, and Australia are considered correct depending on the corner of the world where you are talking about it, but at least the first two are not ambiguous.

[MeAgain]

It is a constituent country because of events that shaped it into one. Originally, the states which make up Australia were all independent of one another and operated much like countries. They were in competition with one another for everything and had the potential and sometimes the will to start a war with one another. They never did because they united into one country which they named after the continent which they were part of, that is Australia. Before that time everyone identified themselves as Victorian, New South Welshman, Queenslander etc. Now they...I mean WE... are all Australian.

It's not misleading at all, similar situation to USA before the "American Civil War". It's only USA now because of that war. Only the Australian states united into one "super" country without fighting, but it wasn't without years of arguing. For example: they couldn't agree whether Sydney or Melbourne should be the capital of this new country, instead they picked a place directly half way between the two cities. At the time that place, called Canberra, was just a sheep farm (now it's slightly better). Infact, even today Canberra is hardly a city and nowhere near as large or advanced as Sydney or Melbourne, but that's where the Australian Parliament house is and is therefore the "Capital Territory" and the capital city of Australia.

I should point out that oceans don't make up the continents, and islands by themselves are not considered continents, but are awarded to the largest local mass of LAND. That's why British Isles (for example) are not a continent but are "given" to Europe to form part of that continent. Same goes with numerous islands that belong to Asia and so on. Antartica is a similar situation to Australia with the exception of islands and a population of humans (penguins don't count ).

[Zhuge_Liang]

I'll have to take your word for it regarding Australian history, I personally have no interest in the subject, and am not quite sure what it has to do with my point. I might as well start talking about the clans and high king of ancient ireland

It is surely common knowledge that continents are established around large landmasses? You just mustn't confuse that with thinking that the landmasses are continents in themselves.

In any event the fact we have been able to establish that you are from Australia explains your preferred name for the Oceanic continent, ambiguous as it is. I must say though that any nationalistic pride Australians may have at the fact they call Oceania Australia is misplaced, as continents are merely geographical boundaries, not sates with any kind of political power or influence.

My argument stands that it is an ambiguous name. How can it not be if you call this:-


and this:-



the same thing? Much better to call the continent Oceania.

The UK is part of Europe - true

Australia is part of Oceania - true

Australia is part of Australia - ambiguous

New-Zealand is part of australia? - false

New-Zealand is part of Oceania - true

I think calling the oceanic continent 'Australia' is massively misleading.


EDIT

Woo! first rant of the general chat thread lol

[MeAgain]

I didn't realy have much interest in Australian history either, but they forced us to learn it, otherwise I would have failed history back in high school. I'm not trying to give you a history lesson, just to point out that there could have been several countries on Australia and in fact there were. They are the states which you can see on the second map you posted.

Correct about the landmass stuff. The problem withe first image you have posted is that it shows countries such as Indonesia, Malesia, etc. Here those countries are considered part of Asia not Australia. Everything east of Indonesia is considered part of the Australian continent.

I'm only annoying everyone about this because I have never heard the stuff (here) of which you are describing. To be honest I still can't believe it. The stuff about "nationalistic pride" doesn't sound like me, especially when you consider that I wasn't born here or even had the choice of coming to Australia...anyway, that's another story. The main reason is that I have been taught one thing and now you say it could be something else.

BUT I don't understand why you can't understand that calling the continent "Australia" is not necessarily misleading or at all wrong.

Anyway, no more rants from me, it's bedtime.